Electric Guitar Tone: Pickups and Strings. There are basically two types of pickups for electric guitars: single coils and humbuckers; and they sound completely different. Single coils tend to be softer and brighter (and electrical interference will cause them to hum); humbuckers tend to be louder and have much stronger midrange and bass response (and they don't hum). In addition, single coils tend to have better clarity than humbuckers when played clean, but humbuckers tend to work better with overdrive or distortion (because they are more powerful). Single coils also tend to sound better in the neck position, and humbuckers tend to sound better in the bridge position (again because of the midrange response and the additional power).

You really can't go wrong with any of these tall bottles. If you like big and beefy, try the JJ or the TAD. If you want a brighter tone with more detail, go for the SED or the Svetlana. If you would rather have something with a little flatter eq and smoother sound, I'd recommend the Electro-Harmonix 6l6EH or the Sovtek 5881WXT+. I especially like smooth overdrive tone of the 6l6EH and 5881WXT+ in a master volume amp.

All of these tubes have long, thin plates that are separated, so you can see the space between them just like the original Mullard ECC83's. To my ear, these vintage style tubes tend to have a fairly flat eq, which I associate with a more European sound, as opposed the Tung Sol's, which accentuate the highs and lows more and have more of an American tone. The problem with these long plate tubes is they tend not to do well in high gain amps and combo amps, if they are not very well made. The only one I have found to be reliable in a guitar amp is the Mullard 12ax7 reissue. It costs a little more, but if you want a premium tube that has more of a European tone, that's the one I'd recommend.

Guitar Wiring Explored – Switches Part 1. Now that we’re comfortable with the basic wiring of a guitar, we can look at some of the more popular mods. This article introduces mini toggle switches and pushpull pots, and shows how we can use these to modify a Strat in such a way as to allow use to add the neck pickup to any selection. This expands the number of available pickup combinations to 7. Guitar Wiring Explored – Humbucker Internals. In this article, we take a break from wiring pickups, switches and pots, and get to grips with the internal structure of a humbucker. This allows us to demystify four-conductor cable and understand how we can split coils or wire a humbucker in parallel instead of series.